Peter's Japan blog

Gotten my pre-ordered singles the 27th, had them sent to my hotel, so I had 2 handshake tickets in my pocket, so I went off early to Odaiba. I arrived about 1.5 hours before the exchange of the tickets and got off at the stop at Venus Fort. Since Mega Web wasn't open yet, I had go around the back of the building, but when I approached the back of Zepp Tokyo there was already a staff member guiding me towards the front where there were already a lot of people queuing. Since I didn't know much about how all this was going to happen, I had to keep my eyes and ears open as to how this was going to go down. So at 10h, the line started to move to go up to the counter and exchange the vouchers that came with the single for an entrance ticket and handshake tickets. I saw several people with many vouchers, and as I didn't know how the handshake would be, I wanted to be sure and bought an extra CD, so I had 3 handshake tickets. I had 4 members that I wanted to shake hands with (Serina, Kohara Haruka, Noro Kayo and Ohori Megumi) but I was also thinking of not spending too much money, so I kept it at 3.

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This episode shows part of their second Shinahachi Live in NGK in Osaka. And this time we're the highly anticipated live performances of Yarakai Heart, Queen Bee ~Shoujo no jidai kara~ and Ichikoi. The fourth song was the old song "friend". The episode starts off with a little bit of backstage preparation.

I really liked the full Yarakai Heart dance, having now seen the other choreography from the PV. Too bad they have to hold their mikes to sing, so the moves from the PV are halved to just one hand.

Queen Bee was very sexy K-Pop style dance. Normally Yurippe was in the Queen Bee group too, but she was absent, so the choreography was apparently changed a little. But nevertheless it has a lot of potential with some hot moves from Yokoyama and Okawa. Asahi didn't really fit in the group though.

Then came Ichikoi, the song from team Gakuran being Goto and Asahi who are playing guys. They've been doing this act since the Meniwa Aoba Yama Hotogisu Hatsukoi PV and now have their own song. They try to act like men with their clothes, moves and speech ;p I really hope Gocchan comes back in 6 months, because she did very well. I liked her voice better than Asahi's in this live.

And this Shinahachi Live in NGK ended with a nice rendition of friend by the whole group.

And they've fooled the girls again thinking it was going to Zeiin Itadakimasu Quiz.
But it's the graduation episode of chief AD Nishida, this time called Nishi-yan ^^. And Masuno is singing again to the song played in the background xD Uematsu AD also joins to participate in the quiz as he would know Nishida good.

First question is the full name of Nishida, which everyone except Uematsu had wrong xD

Second question is which member Nishida had a first bad moment with (I think ;p).

Third question is which person he likes the most ;p Hint being a name with 3 kanji. Final hint starts with S. But everyone was in it on this question to let Sakacchi think it was her, while it was Saori, the assitant producer xD

This episode had the new Makehende PV as intro! It's such a lovely song by the Kansai girls and they made a great PV for it!

And we get another dodgeball episode! It's the one man battle against the rest of the group, and of course it has to be Nomoto Manami for dodgeball. In the first part of this episode she has 5 minutes to hit everybody. Whoever remains gets an expensive bento pack.
Tonooka seemed to last the longest, but finally had to give in as well.

The second part of the episode was a battle between two teams lead by Nomoto Manami and Ojima Chika, and the had to pick members for their team by jan-ken-pon who could choose first.
It was a tight battle but in the end, Oji's team won!

Also Masuno was constantly singing a song, which sounded very familiar to me and of course it was familiar to me because it was SEVEN DAYS WAR, but in the original version, not the cover by Ayumi Hamsaki :)

Arrived in Akihabara at 9h30, strolling around a bit to kill the time.
10h: Ishimaru store opens, and go up to 5F to get and pay my 2 dvds. Was standing around a bit to see what others were doing. Didn't learn much so I just took my printed email and gave it to the guy behind the counter. He knew right away what it was and what to look at and didn't even ask anything so everything went perfect xD. Got my 2 dvds and received the event ticket! With 2 stamps on it as I got 2 dvds. Still had 1.5 hours until I had to be back here so went to eat some donuts at Mr. Donut ;p

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Today's Shinahachi Live started just a little late, and both Idoling and YGA members came on stage to do their New Years greeting. Then after a few talks, this Shinahachi Live started with the Idoling part first!
They started off with Eve. From what I can remember,other songs were (not exactly in that order and a few missing): Meniwa Aoba..., Ganbare Otome, Kimi ga suki, U, Don't be Afraid and finally Shokugyo: Idol. There was also a special request song sung by Maipuru and Yurippe from SMAP (don't remember the title). I like music loud, but it seemed to get louder and louder near the end, especially the last song was a bit over the top. The song has got an awesome live vibe and is good loud, but don't overdo it... all the rest was okay though. Overal I liked it very much :-)

After a short break and a little game on stage between Idoling and YGA, the YGA part came up. Already a few people had left by now, but there was still a lot of people left. I must say most YGA fans like Idoling, but not all Idoling fans seem to like YGA, which you can see with some people just standing still during their songs. I was also totally unfamiliar with YGA songs, and well, I liked the bass in their songs and they had some interesting hand movements with the crowd, but I'm not converted :-)

At the end, someone random was chosen to get a picture on stage. When the girls asked his favorite member, he seemed verbally and visibly disappointed because his favorite girl (Umeko) wasn't there, and then said like: well if I have to choose, Sakacchi is okay.

After the ending talk of Idoling and YGA, came the final cherry on the cake: the handshake event! The 4 Idoling members participating in the handshaking were lined up in order, Endou #3 first, Tonooka #6 second, Yazawa #7 third and Sakai #14 last. I had prepared something to say,but I think nothing came out and it did go very fast, so here goes. Got nervous when I saw them standing there, and came up to Endou first, I shook her hand and I noticed she wanted to do it properly and her time to give a rather firm handshake and she said happy new year in Japanese (I think), I don't remember what I blurted out,but 3 seconds go by quick and next was Tonooka. She also said in her typical beautiful wide smile "Shin-nen akemashitou,omedetou" (happy new year in japanese), then came Yazawa (my favorite), she just said arigatou (thank you) but she noticed I was a foreigner so changed to english and said "Thank you" (quite good,not the usual sankyu) and I said "Thank you" back and I also quickly added "See you tomorrow!", and then came Sakai (my second favorite), she had immediately seen that I was foreign (she might have heard it from Yazawa next to her) and said "Thank you" right away, I also said "Thank you" back and "See you tomorrow" and she kept waving back and looking at me,and doing thumbs up! I was (and still am) so thrilled my 2 favorite members actually had a reaction!

Can't wait to shake their hands again tomorrow, when Tonooka will be switched with Yokoyama, so it's still with my three favorites (Endou,Yazawa & Sakai). And I will be in 4th row tomorrow, today was 9th row, it will be realllly close!